Last spring, a colleague of mine posted some poignant thoughts on Facebook.  Two years before, she had, very unexpectedly, lost her husband, altering her life in more ways that she could at that moment imagine.  In the spring, however, she found a wonderful new light of hope in her life:  the birth of her first grandchild.  Though she still misses her husband terribly (but is thankful that he is now with God), she delights in this beautiful gift of new life.
     Isn't this how life is?  We face loss, often immense loss, yet, after a season, we encounter an event that, at least in part, fills, soothes, and supplants it.
     But why is life this way?  Why is, in most instances, loss followed by an experience that, to a point, replaces it?  What is it about the world that ensures the inevitability of newness in the aftermath of privation and disillusionment?
     Proverbs 27 gives us a clue.  Towards its end, it tells us that, because of the presence of God in the world, "When the the grass disappears, the new growth is seen, and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in."  God is a God of newness, a God who fills loss and eases disappointment, a God who, despite all circumstances, is a God of resurrection and new life, a God who is always working on the next thing.  He never looks back, he never dwells on the past.  God is all about what is to come.
     And in his hands, something always will.  So does Isaiah observe, "Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past.  Behold, I will do something new . . . " (Isaiah 43:18-19a).
     Take heart in the future of God.